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Academy Sex-harassment Case Stalling Admiral's Promotion

January 28, 1996|By Richard Liefer and Carl J. Panek.

WASHINGTON — Two months after President Clinton forced the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific to resign after making an insensitive remark about a rape case, the officer appointed to fill that slot is embroiled in a sex-harassment controversy.

The Senate has withheld confirmation of Adm. Joseph Prueher to the post after he voiced regrets about his handling of a 1989 harassment case in which a female midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy was chained to a urinal by male classmates.

While the Senate Armed Services Committee endorsed the promotion of Prueher, now vice chief of naval operations, to Pacific commander, the full Senate held off Friday on confirming him by unanimous consent. That indicated at least one senator objected to his confirmation.

Clinton asked for Adm. Richard Macke's resignation as Pacific commander last November after Macke told reporters that three U.S. servicemen charged with raping a 12-year-old Japanese girl on Okinawa should have hired a prostitute.

As commandant of midshipmen in 1989, Prueher admitted Friday, he told the father of the young woman in the academy incident that she appeared to be smiling in photos taken by her assailants. The comment apparently was meant to reassure the father the woman had not suffered excessively, but it has dogged Prueher since, even as the Navy continued to promote him.

"I told him she was presumably not distressed and in fact appeared to be smiling in one photo," Prueher said, recounting the conversation to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"Somehow or another, he interpreted my comments as a threat to distribute the photos," Prueher said. "That was not my intent.

Caroline Dreyer, stepmother of the victim, Gwen Dreyer, said that she and her husband have been trying to block Prueher's promotion because of what they view as his callous response to the incident.